“This is a very good album full of compositions with complex and evolving rhythms”
1 Under Water 9:45
2 Norway - My Heart is With You 9:24
3 Sunday afternoon 6:04
4 Earth 11:51
5 Sonar 12:36
6 Nightwalk 5:56
7 Evolution (John Dyson) 5:47
8 Live Studio Recording for Satzvey Castle Concert 2011 (Bonus) 13:21
(DDL 74:55) (V.F.)
(Berlin School, Prog EM)
It's with a lot of emotion and passion that FD Project has undertook WATER & EARTH, a very beautiful album where the melodies are deliciously sculpted by superb movements of the sequencer. Multiple sequences creating lines which intersect under layers of synth that are both dreamlike as well as a guitar with always heavy, even sharp riffs, and sometimes violent as well as sometimes melancholic solos.
Under Water opens with oblong and sinuous synth waves with hybrid tones that intertwine while fine crystalline arpeggios skip and dance in a light zigzagging movement. These glass chords form a good movement of the sequencer which undulates with a slightly jerky gait, supported by a bass line with fine roaring pulsations. This very good spiral increases the pace with the arrival of percussions that Frank Dorittke manipulates with strength, hammering a hypnotic pace which follows the ascending curve of his sequencer. The rhythm changes slightly when the electric six-string awakens to release sulfurous and languid cosmic solos which chase away the sinuous metallic waves and transport Under Water towards a cosmic rock which dances to the rhythm of its sequences. Norway - My Heart is With You is a real gem! Its intro dances with keyboard chords which skip, undulate and intertwine with brief solos of a guitar which dreams under a chimerical fall. Everything is magic here! The waterfall is transformed into a cosmic wind where discreet celestial voices blow on scattered keyboard chords. Sadness and loneliness are felt with the slow guitar solos that cross the softness of an undulating movement, swept by the cosmic winds of a vaporous ambience where a mellotron veil surrounds a passion held back and repressed at the borders of melancholy. Piercing, FD's guitar floats like tearing cries under a line of synths sweeping the horizon with its dark and threatening sound. And the intensity of Norway - My Heart is With You reaches its peak with the arrival of percussions which shape a sensual structure and trace the lines of a curious bolero where the guitar solos abound with passion and intensity between riffs that became heavier, creating a sensual electronic rock shaken by powerful drum roll. With Sunday Afternoon the German guitarist offers us a jazz/blues fusion on a sensual structure where scintillating arpeggios and stardust shine around slow and sinuous guitar solos sometimes sober, sometimes strident. A good cosmic title à la Software, Earth offers a tasty spatial ballet with scintillating sequences of glasses which dance with a hypnotic cadence on a good sequential oscillatory movement. Sober percussions, a bass line and strange pulsations with duck tones accompany this delicate oneiric dance which cradles its movement of the sequencer in a good mellotron mist and increases its pace a little under nice synth solos.
Sonar is another great track where FD Project shows his dexterity in handling both the sequencer and his guitars. Echosounder sounds emerge from the depths and forge an ascending sequential movement, whose strikes sound like anvil hits, under a sky full of breaths reverberating from a dark synth. Another sequential line is formed. Its chords are more delicate and respond to the echo of the echosounder resonances. Twisted synth solos wind this static circle where heterogeneous pulsations dance on a sequential movement which is enriched by another line, while the synth solos cross with indiscipline an arrhythmic movement which turns tirelessly in the whirlwind of its sequences. The percussions plunge Sonar into an infernal spherical movement with heterogeneous pulsations and the powerful solos of a guitar which escapes heavy riffs on a constantly whirling structure. More fluid, Nightwalk flies with a good oscillatory movement of the sequencer. The sequences are juxtaposed on a melodious structure where the cosmic winds are very musical and alongside guitar solos on a good rhythmic permutation. Evolution is an electronic ballad composed by John Dyson. A fluty synth sings among stars drawn by arpeggios. A melodious synth escapes from delicate solos, in accordance with the fine sequenced approach. But FD has fun with the drums and hammers a fiercely undisciplined rhythm where furious guitar solos mingle with frenzied strikes while the structure of Evolution returns to the musicality of its point of origin.
Live Studio Recording for Satzvey Castle Concert 2011 is a bonus track composed for this festival but performed and recorded in FD's studios. It completes his 11th opus with the same musical approach that we find everywhere on WATER & EARTH; a progressive rhythm surrounded by reverberating and twisted waves which coo in a dark sky while the sequences dance in a lively circular motions. Fine sinuous solos float above this movement which will experience a descent in vaporous ambiences before being reborn with a more lively and curt rhythm with hybrid chords which slam a delicious movement as musical than hypnotic.
Between his influences for Mike Oldfield and Tangerine Dream, Frank Dorittke continues to forge a name by lining up solid albums. As far as I'm concerned, WATER & EARTH is his best yet. We feel a more mature FD Project and more sure of its means. An FD who certainly learned from his sessions with Ron Boots because he likes to surround his compositions with complex and evolving rhythms where melodies and ambiences are besieged by sequences and synth lines with multiple musicality. The whole is always surrounded by a biting and incisive guitar which sings as much as it cries in the shade of its hypnotic structures.
Sylvain Lupari (September 17th, 2011) ****¼*
Available at FD Project Bandcamp